Tag: indymediaback

Projects that need to work to help #reboot the #openweb

The #OGB is important to develop better ways of having “trust” based conversations and “trust” based “governance” in the #openweb. It is built on years of on-the-ground organizing and emphasizes the need for voluntary cooperation and collaboration. The project recognizes the problems in alternative tech, starting with the #4opens to remove complexity to building governance structures that are native to the #fediverse. The #OGB address the limitations of #mainstreaming approaches.

The #indymediaback project is a reboot of the original #Indymedia project, which was a decentralized, grassroots media network that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The project aims to learn from the mistakes and challenges faced by the original Indymedia, particularly the split between the #fashernitas and #geekproblem factions.

The focus of the #indymediaback reboot is to return to the path of the #fashernitas, which emphasizes open media and decentralized structures, rather than control and centralization. The project aims to build an open media network (#OMN) that promotes direct democracy, open publishing, and anti-authoritarianism.

The reboot also acknowledges the risk of another split within the community, particularly if some members push for a control/encryptionist path. The challenge is to find a way to navigate this without succumbing to tribalism and power politics.

The #indymediaback project recognizes the importance of hashtags and semantic web technologies, which were not core to the original Indymedia project. Tags and metadata are being used to help organize and categorize content.

Overall, the #indymediaback project aims to revive the spirit of open media and grassroots activism, while learning from past mistakes and embracing new technologies and approaches.

The #OMN (Open Media Network), is a decentralized network of media sites that share content and promote independent media. It aims to provide an alternative to mainstream media by creating a network of interconnected sites that prioritize openness, collaboration, and decentralization.

The #OMN project emphasizes the importance of grassroots community-driven media, where people and groups can create and share their own content. It seeks to challenge the dominance of #mainstreaming media and promote a more equitable and just society.

The project has been running for over ten years and operates with an #openprocess. Users can become mods after being involved for a certain period of time. The modding process is based on a clear project statement and encourages a respectful and inclusive community.

The #OMN project is closely related to the #visionontv project, which is a grassroots media project that creates and distributes independent video content. The two projects share similar values and goals in promoting alternative media and challenging mainstream narratives.

The #IndymediaBack project is an initiative aimed at reviving the #Indymedia project

The #IndymediaBack project is an initiative aimed at reviving the #Indymedia project, a decentralized grassroots media network that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The project was founded on the principles of open publishing, direct democracy, and anti-authoritarianism. This very powerful project was ripped apart from internal and external tensions and forces. The #IndymediaBack project aims to reboot the project before the split happened, around 2008, with a focus on the #fashernitas path of the splinter groups. This path emphasizes #openmedia and decentralized structures, rather than control and centralization. The project aims to learn from the mistakes of the past and avoid the same tribalism and power politics that led to the decline of the original project. The project is based on the principles of openness, collaboration, and decentralization, and aims to provide an alternative to mainstream media by creating and distributing independent media content.

The #hashtags embody a story and world-view

My use of #hashtags is confusing a lot of people, good to have some signal in the noise on this subject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext am using them in the way the #WWW was designed to use them #KISS

The #hashtags embody a story and world-view that are rooted in a progressive and critical perspective on technology and society. They highlight the negative impact of neoliberalism (#deathcult) and consumer capitalism (#fashernista) on society, and promote the original ideals of the World Wide Web and internet culture (#openweb). The #closedweb hashtag critiques the for-profit internet and its social consequences, while the #4opens promote the principles of transparency, collaboration, and sharing in open-source development.

The #geekproblem hashtag draws attention to the cultural movement of geeks, who can become blinded by their own technical knowledge and fail to consider the broader social implications of their work (#techshit). The #encryptionists hashtag critiques the dominant belief among some geeks that all solutions need more encryption, which can lead to a desire for total control and artificial scarcity.

Overall, these hashtags are interlocking and tell a wide-ranging story and world-view that advocates for a more humane, collaborative, and transparent approach to technology and society. The #nothingnew hashtag raises the question of whether new technological projects are needed, or whether we should focus on improving existing ones. The #techchurn hashtag refers to the technological outcome of the #geekproblem, which can lead to a constant cycle of new projects that do not address underlying social issues. Finally, the #OMN and #indymediaback hashtags promote the idea of an open media network and the rebooting of the altmedia project that was once the size of traditional media on the #openweb. The #OGB hashtag represents the need for open governance and the power of community to make decisions collectively.

My indymedia story

This is a DRAFT

Indymedia was a decentralized, grassroots media network that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was founded on the principles of open publishing, direct democracy, and anti-authoritarianism. The project eventually experienced a split in the UK, with one side, the #fashernitas building an aggregating site and the other #geekproblem building a centralized silo. The split was supericaly over technical disagreements, but was driven by doctrinal and tribal disputes. The decision-making process, which relied on #formalconsensus, had become ossified and unfixable, so no decisions could be make any more to mediate this.

The split was ultimately driven by a focus on control on both sides. The two sides were more interested in their own tribal agendas than in working together to build a diverse and #4opens #OMN. The silo eventually built an aggregating site, with RSS feeds, but in a very controlling way. The stress was always on control, and this ultimately led to the decline of the #Indymedia project. The #dotcons took over the space, and the project became irrelevant.

I was working on the project, the person working in the middle saying “don’t be a prat” as each side tore and tore and tore I continued in the grassroots, saying that the culture is the key and that the value is in open media network, not control. The split in Indymedia was a shit show, but we can learn from it in the reboot.

The plan now is to reboot the project before the split happened, around 2008 with a focus on the #fashernitas path of the splinter groups. This path emphasizes openmedia and decentralized structures, rather than control and centralization. However, with the reboot there is still a very real risk that some members of the community will push for a control/encryptionist path, which could lead to another split in focus. The challenge is to find a way to walk this path without succumbing to the same tribalism and and power politics that led to the decline of the original project.

The use of hashtags and semantic web technologies did not exist at the time. Tags and metadata were not core to the start original Indymedia project, but they were later being added as a way to help organize and categorize content, the idea of building a structure with #RSS feeds was being discussed and enacted.

At the time, Interestingly, the silo path recognized that their approach was wrong and came back to aggregation, with moderated control of RSS flows. This is reflected in the #OMN’s choice of “trusted flow” and “moderated flow.” We are building both sides of the split of the original project and yes, criticizing the fashernista path a little, which only had trust, which would not likely work at all in today’s world. It’s important we do not make this decision for people. We let them decide and build both. The key is to avoid building pointless messes and to resist the #mainstreaming urge to make a mess. We are not mainstreaming, and we must not be prats about this.

Looking at what happened to the web after this time, the last ten years of tech history, the grassroots silo path went on to build #Diaspora, while the grassroots #fashernista path went on to build the #Fediverse. However, despite these developments, there was still no news based open media network being built yet. This led to the creation of the #OMN and the current #indymediaback reboot.

Unfortunately, in today’s world of liberation “cats” due to the last 20 years of the #deathcult, nobody sees any value in the “open” part of the #OMN. Everyone is still fixated on the silo path of control, we have to work against this #mainstreaming blindness. Over the last 20 years, the #mainstreaming as a whole took the silo/encryptionst path of the Indymedia split. Contemporary social media took #fahernista side of the #open path, the #dotcons, took the ideas and sold us back a facsimile of this that they could control, such as Facebook and other algorithms base #dotcons

To make the reboot work best, we have to tiptoe around the legacy of #Indymedia, focus on rebooting the project ain its 2008 state, where the social process were still working. The silos’ path control the old domains as they took as a part of the ripping. We are building something that looks like the fashernista path they fought against, so we need to build two projects in one: control and trust. We need to get the domains back in use, which would be a huge boost to the #reboot project. At the same time, we need to build trust with everyone else, as this is the power of open. It’s complicated, but everyone wants it back. However, the history is challenging, and the two sides are still fighting: fedivers vs. silos as we see this old mess today.

Why do people keep doing pointless self harm – news aggreation

There are hundreds (over the last 20 years likely thousands) of news, aggregation sites. It’s a common #dotcons model to inclose the “commons” people see free content and think I can capture that. The problem is news content looks like it’s free, but that’s because it’s “free” to spread, but it’s VERY expensive in human (and thus money) to produce the content. This side is never addressed in these failed projects.

We currently have #traditionalmedia all round the world pushing to be paid for aggregation and even search of their “product”. At #OMN and #indymediaback, we get round these issues as we add “value” by the #DIY labour of the meany people involved in the shared “commons” space. We are producing rather than “stealing” in the #mainstreaming view.

It’s normal that the top-down news aggregators are seen as parasites, and the bootm up aggregators as adding value. For a few years of #indymedia growth, #traditionalmedia was using #indymedia as a “news” source, this shaped the #mainstreaming agenda, adding value to both paths.

When the #openweb we were building was ripped apart by internal and external pressers and agenders, the #DIY value was captured by the #dotcons such as #Facebook and later #twitter (when it left it’s open’ish path).

The first step away from the current mess is to recreate the “commons” to bring the value back from the #dotcons capture, this should be more possible now as we are building from the #Fediverse where this has already happened. What we do with this recreated “commons” is up to meany different groups/people, but let’s hold the #4opens and #PGA strongly in place to stop “common sense” enclosing attempts, which are constant pointless damage we need to work around.

To sum up, a key part of the #OMN is to recreate the data “commons” then it’s up to meany other groups to find useful things to do with this free to use non-commercial value. And yes lots of people will see the stupid path of enclosing this to capture the value for themselves, this is damage.

In capitalism, any non-owned value is seen as an opportunity to capture, enclosed and profit from. This is why we have copyleft licences in code, which is visibly failing and why we extend this to the #4opens to fail less 😉

This all comes down to the question of what we value. And for meany people, this is a blindness.

Thinking through composting the #techshit


The #openweb has many benefits, though it will not always be the right tool for all situations, there is a lot of mature tech available for privacy and control. The desire to mix these technologies comes from #mainstreaming liberalisms desire for social media to be private, rather than inherently public.

The decentralized #openweb and encrypted chat are obviously separate and should coexist without reproducing the mistakes of centralized #dotcons social media. Focusing on the #4opens and leaving hard privacy for individuals and groups in peer-to-peer encrypted chat is the “native” path.

Thinking through composting the #techshit. In our era of dead ideologies like post-modernism and neoliberalism, we need to build “bounded” projects that have clear boundaries, such as #4opens and #PGA, to keep us focused and resist #mainstreaming liberalism and right-wing ideologies. This helps us create a shared space of practice and direction for politics and technology. While “branding” can be powerful, caution is needed to not creating a sense of dogmatic tribalism in these movements #OMN

Good horizontalists understand theory comes from practice, and the basis of this is #DIY – working practice to build theory. Starting from theory lead’s to a dizzy mess that results in more #techshit to compost or academic wank. Instead. Building from grassroots DIY practices, such as #OMN, #Indymediaback, and #OGB, and then using theory from these practices.

We need to emphasize the importance of focus on the #openweb. Engage with this flow to practice activism and to avoid pushing mess.

Theory and practice in activism

Meany #fashernistas have a troubling view of theory and practice. All good horizontalists understand that they come from practice. At the basis of this is #DIY that is working through practice to build theory.

To start from theory go ground and round and round then try and put this into practice, ends in a dizzy mess. When this mess is imposed as a solution we obviously get more #techshit to compost or academic wank to clean up.

We are building from what works #grassroots #DIY with #OMN #indymediaback #OGB based on theory from practices.

Good to engage with this flow to practice activism. Please try not to push mess our way, focus is important.

Talking about grassroots media as a step away from the current #techshit

Hamish Campbell, a veteran in radical media for the past 30 years, discusses the failure of current technology and mainstream culture. He highlights how the #dotcon boom commodified our data, resulting in closed technology silos like #Facebook and #Instagram that capture our attention and data for their own profit. Campbell argues that alternative technology built around an #encryptionist agenda has gone nowhere and that the world is dominated by these tech giants. He argues for the importance of the #openweb, which was born open but is dying closed over the last 20 years, and advocates for rebooting grassroots media as a solution. Campbell uses the Oxford #IMC as an example of how a simple federated network can work by sharing content, using trusted link flows, and allowing content to be moderated or rolled back. He believes that the beauty of the #openweb is based on free flowing links, unlike the #closedweb of our current dominating technology. Campbell concludes that the #OMN project is more important for what it does not do than for what it does, and highlights the need to take small steps towards a solution by rebooting grassroots media as a example project.

What you can do

In the last few years there have been events and gatherings in the US, Portugal, and Madrid, discussing the possibility of #rebooting #Indymedia. The current history of Indymedia has been primarily written by academics and is very Americanized, so there is a need to retell the stories and provide a wider perspective. To successfully reboot Indymedia, I think it needs to return to its open and serendipitous roots, rather than the bureaucratic and closed structure it became. Fortunately, most of the technical tools needed for a decentralized and federated system, such as ActivityPub and Scuttlebutt, already exist. To maintain its radical grassroots philosophy, the #4opens principles should be used to ensure openness and accessibility. To get involved, one can search for #indymediaback or “reboot Indymedia” and find useful links #OMN

Talking about the #indymediaback project

Q. A few comments on your excellent video.

Your page layout is driven by desktop. Nowadays, people think mobile first.

The rollback: an interesting idea.

A. Yep it’s the #nothingnew part of the project, the original IMC was ripped apart buy internal arguments and bad process, so we are rebooting the project before this happened so making minimal changes outa the box of UX and process, the needed changes can then come FROM “consensus” of the fresh crew running the rebooted instances.

The mobile expirence is swipe sideways to each of the menu items as columns. This is a reasonable compromise, as the original project had no mobile interface.

This is an example https://indymedia.hs2rebellion.earth/users/news you have to click past the SSL error to see the site, on mobile a single column interface, but the swiping is not implemented, so you have to click on the menu at the top. This test site is a RSS/AP aggregator #indymediaback

Q. Well, that is interesting. Seeing something is so much more impressive than just a video. What is the software platform? What web server are you using?
It is pretty easy to do https.
Is anyone actually using the software?

A. sadly, the 2-year working project was killed off by covid just as we were going to start the outreach at protest camps. The codebase is now abandoned, was based on epycion, but dev on this folk is now stopped/blocked.

What we had is a good expirence though, Imagen if the swiping worked. The RSS and AP side works for input, the AP output does not work, none of the tagging was implemented on these rollout test sites, we are still running 3 but needs a committed crew to restart #indymediaback

Was 6 months work for 3 people to put this working code together #DIY and a wider collective to do the work on the text and process to bring the original #indymeda back in the spirit of #nothingnew but the stress of dev and covid broke this as we were getting close to test rollout, been dormant since then.

We need to chose a new codebase and find a coding crew, most of the hard work is done, all the existing design, process and outreach text is in place to push this out agen as the “news” part of the #fediverse

But its another year of nonpaid #openweb work… phwww… fighting agenst the pointlessness of the #mainstreaming is a hard sell, even though it’s blatantly and obviously needed.